“The Mission Reach construction project had closed the Mission Parkway, where it goes through the park,” said Mardi Arce, superintendent of the missions park. Visitors “use that particular road. Now that that's open, our numbers are certainly rebounding.”

The parkway winds through portions of the park system, which consists of Mission Concepción, Mission San José, Mission San Juan and Mission Espada, as well as the Espada Aqueduct and Espada and Acequia parks. The Alamo — founded as Mission San Antonio de Valero in 1718 — is managed by the state and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

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Missions park attendance

Attendance at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park has fluctuated in the past 10 years.

2004: 1,102,445

2005: 1,139,133

2006: 1,173,771

2007: 1,208,498

2008: 1,303,212

2009: 1,567,667

2010: 1,304,690

2011: 568,021

2012: 614,810

2013: 521,705

Arce says the Mission Reach's completion has helped draw more interest to the area and therefore the missions.

“We've definitely seen an increase in recreational use,” Acre wrote in an email, based on anecdotal feedback from her staff. “We're also seeing our parking lots being used by people to access Mission Reach on foot or with their own bikes.”

The missions' all-time high attendance figure was 1.56 million visitors in 2009.

Unlike Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, which has an attendance station, people enter San Antonio's missions from multiple points. Counters on the road are used throughout the park to produce vehicle totals.

“So we have to make some assumptions for the number of people per vehicle, the number of people who go through multiple sites throughout the park,” Acre said.

Acre said 2014's numbers should be more accurate because some faulty counters were replaced and the formula used to figure attendance was adjusted. For example, the monthly total is reduced to account for employee vehicles.

“We're trying to get really good, clean numbers,” Acre said.

Nearly 3.5 million people visited national parks in Texas in 2013, spent more than $173 million and helped employ 2,374 people, according to a report released by the National Park Service.

Parks around the country receive a lot of visitors because they all offer something different, said Patrick O'Driscoll, public affairs spokesman for the National Park Service's intermountain region, which includes Texas and seven other states.

But except for the missions park in San Antonio, overall numbers in the nation are down from the previous year.

In 2013, 273.6 million people visited the national parks across the country and spent $14.6 billion. In 2012, 282.8 million visited the parks and spent $14.7 billion.

Visitor spending is based on lodging, transportation, food, souvenirs, and admissions and fees.

O'Driscoll said the 16-day government shutdown the country experienced in October significantly affected the national parks.

“It was a still busy time of year for people to visit the national parks, so that certainly had an effect,” he said. “There weren't people visiting those parks. They weren't spending money in the communities around the parks.”

Although there was a decline in 2013, O'Driscoll says the National Parks Service is expecting an increase of visitors in years to come, especially with the approach of the service's centennial anniversary in 2016.

“These are America's national parks, and people continue to love them,” O'Driscoll said.